Sunday, April 03, 2011

Day out to London with Xavier

A couple of weeks ago I had a lovely day in London with my eight year old son, Xavier. We went to the London Dungeon, Borough Market for a delicious lunch (including trying out oysters), City Hall and the Design Museum. Having been a member of the Design Museum for a few years and given up my membership, because I felt that it simply wasn’t worth the membership fee, I reluctantly bought tickets at Xavier’s insistence. But I’m glad to say that on that day, with the particular exhibits that were on display, Xavier had a great time and had to be dragged away. En route to the Design Museum, Xavier spotted some sketchers, sketching Tower Bridge.He was very keen that I sketched as well, so as I’ve already sketched Tower Bridge I used the opportunity to make a quick sketch of City Hall, the home of the Greater London Authority.

Saturday, April 02, 2011

When is the right age for Shakespeare?

I saw a wonderful production of King Lear last night at the Royal Shakespeare Company Theatre in Stratford. The production was so exciting that a man in the audience sitting opposite me, fainted when Gloucester's eyes were put out.

But despite loving the theatre, I was nearly lost to Shakespeare in my teens, because I'd been bored to distraction by enforced attendance at Shakespeare productions when I was too young to understand the language and hadn’t even had an introduction to the plot of the play. So my first few years as a student in London I bought tickets for every kind of theatrical production apart from Shakespeare.

Luckily, a friend took me to see Ian McKellan in 'Corialanus' and I was electrified by the production, and completely fell in love with Shakespeare. So if any of you have been following Jamie's Dream School, do you think Simon Callow is right to start with Shakespeare to engage school drop-outs?